Are consoles holding back gaming tech?

"Remember the good old days of id Software and Epic Games? Their constant battle in the PC FPS graphics arena? - Quake, Unreal. Quake 3, Unreal Tournament. Back in those days we had the ah-mazing 3dfx Voodoo range of video cards. Those things were unstoppable for smooth gaming at the time. 3dfx ushered an entire new unseen era that just didn't seem possible at the time and really pushed graphics to the edge of imaginations for both gaming developers and gamers alike. But, we always needed the gaming developers pushing envelopes and PC seemed to have the exclusives virtually every year.

Microsoft now have a very, very successful console and market to sell hardware, games, accessories, XBL, Xbox Live Market Place, etc. But in this fight for console supremacy, has Microsoft forgotten what made the Windows platform so great for gamers? - Pushing new Direct X versions every year, bringing new features and functions for developers to take advantage of? - Microsoft recently has promised to "double-down" on PC gamers, but we've had the same promises from AAA based gaming developers promising their next AAA title will not be a console port. Cevat Yerli of Crytek recently bragged about how good the PC version of Crysis 2 will be, yet it is simply not even a shadow of its former self."